


a messy new compulsion

by mayor_crumblepot



Series: valeyne / baby batjokes tumblr fills [2]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Making Out, abandoned places, jerome dressed in that cute lil sweater from his first appearance? that's important because it IS., the perfect unintentional first date idea: take your bougie crush to an abandoned building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-25 15:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayor_crumblepot/pseuds/mayor_crumblepot
Summary: jerome wants to go investigate the abandoned arkham asylum, and bruce can't let him go alone in good conscience. that's really all it is. two boys investigating a spooky asylum.





	1. Chapter 1

Jerome is a basket case, a mistake wearing worn out Converse and the same jacket every day. He’s also Bruce’s partner in their biology lab. 

They aren’t in the same grade; Bruce only has a leg up in a few subjects because of the way the curriculum at his previous private school was organized. He doesn’t see Jerome outside of biology, and he’s starting to think it’s purposeful. The school isn’t that big, where could someone as extreme as Jerome hide?

Bruce isn’t exactly sure that he wants to know.

What he does know, though, is that he wishes he hadn’t come to the party one of their classmates is hosting. He barely talks to any of his classmates since he’s younger than them, and he’s fairly certain he was only invited because he overheard someone else getting asked. 

The host lives in the housing project just outside of the area surrounding the abandoned asylum; Arkham divides the skyline directly outside of the house, the inside of rooms visible from the backyard, if you know where to look.

“The rent is so cheap,” the boy explains, laughing, “‘cause nobody wants to live out here. We’ve got an alarm, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Bruce holes himself up in a lawn chair outside, stares at the slowly darkening outline of Arkham Asylum and pretends that maybe he can leave within the next hour. (He knows that he told Alfred he’d be out all night, well aware that he’d be abnormal to leave if everyone else was staying. He’s trapped by social convention.)

“Stop being a baby, don’t you wanna see what it’s like in there?” Jerome is too loud, always too loud. His voice echoes out of the kitchen and into the backyard.

“No,” another boy follows him out into the yard, reaches for the flashlight in his hand, “I really don’t.”

“Just come with me— what if I need my picture taken with something cool?”

“I’m not going with you. And nobody else will.” The boy has his hands on his hips, blocking the back gate from Jerome’s determined stride. “You’re crazy. You’re a single-serve circus side show. You’ll probably just kill whoever goes out there with you.” 

Jerome stands still, completely speechless until the words seem to come back to him. “Fuck you,” and he gracelessly hops over the chain-link that surrounds the property, becoming a slowly fading light into the brush between the house and the asylum gates. 

“Someone should go after him,” Bruce says, finally, toying with the zipper of his jacket. A failed attempt to seem cool and casual.

“ _You_  follow him,” the boy counters, tossing a smaller flashlight at Bruce, “I fucking dare you, kid.”

Bruce finds Jerome sitting on an overturned shopping cart in the middle of the brush, flashlight pointed at the ground. He realizes, as he comes up and sits down next to him, that he’s never been alone with Jerome before, nor has he ever been so close. 

He’s heard the rumors, he’s not a fool. People say Jerome killed his mother, people say he has family in the circus, that he’s some kind of sociopath. What surprises Bruce is the stride that Jerome takes it all with— this is the most response he’s seen from him at all, actually. 

“Hey, Bruce,” and suddenly Jerome is just as chipper as ever, “did you come to explore with me?” He nudges Bruce’s shoulder with his own, nodding in the general direction of the asylum.

“I figured you shouldn’t go alone,” he says, fidgeting with the switch on the flashlight, “to be sure you’re safe. I need you around to finish the semester.”

“Right,” the redhead takes to his feet, hops up onto the shopping cart and points his flashlight beam at the wall that surrounds the decrepit asylum. “Come on.”

* * *

Every red flag that Bruce has seen in movies gets set off by Arkham Asylum. Everything about it screams  _leave, now_  and it puts Bruce on edge from the moment they slide between the bars of the front gate.

“So,” Jerome starts, walking toward the farthest building, where the doors have fallen off the hinges, “you like public school?”

“It’s interesting,” he says quickly, shining his flashlight at every sound that catches his attention. “May I be frank?”

Jerome cackles as he stumbles into the open doorway, echoing into the abandoned building, “I guess, if you have to be.”

“Your mother. She’s dead?”

“Shit,” he shines the flashlight onto Bruce, “yeah.”

“You didn’t kill her, though,” Bruce’s voice doesn’t betray his concern, doesn’t betray just how stupid he realizes this all is.

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. I’m not gonna kill  _you_  if that’s what you’re worried about.” 

“Why not?”

As Jerome walks into an examination room, he throws himself backward with a steadying hand on the doorframe. He gives Bruce a smile, far too genuine to be disconcerting. “I like you, Brucie. You’re somethin’ else.” With the sound of his footsteps, Jerome retreats into the room and starts kicking things around, “You’re cute, too.”

* * *

The second floor takes them into an infirmary; a dilapidated excuse for one. All of the drawers and cabinets have long-since been looted for medications, leaving only handfuls of expired bandages and a surprising amount of tongue depressors. 

Jerome finds an old nurses’ coat and pulls it over his shoulders, spinning around to show it off like a child would the skirt of a dress, “Does it suit me?”

“That must be so old, Jerome.”

“But do I look  _good_?”

Begrudgingly, Bruce gives Jerome his undivided attention, dropping an empty bottle back onto the floor. “Of course you do,” he says, almost grumpily, “you always do.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

* * *

There’s a room that’s far too deep, with a chair suspended in the middle. A terrifying looking machine connected to rusted metal plates sits next to the chair, the plug connected to the wall by a barrier of burnt rubber. The whole room smells suspiciously of fried fabric and sweat, even ll these years later, and it makes Bruce a little sick.

The room is so cold. 

Jerome is curious as ever, hopping up into the chair and fiddling with the machine as if it were a radio. He twists knobs and presses buttons with reckless abandon, laughing the whole time.

“Jerome,” Bruce starts, his own reflection in the mirrored walls blurred out by the flashlight beam, “get out of the chair.”

“It’s so  _neat_  though.”

“This feels wrong,” he tugs on the knee of Jerome’s pants, gently attempting to pull the other down and out. If asked, Bruce is the first person to denounce the existence of ghosts and spirits alike; he thinks that death is the end, or at least, that it’s supposed to be. Regardless, he knows an unpleasant air when he feels one, he knows that some things are better off having been wary of.

“Are you scared, Brucie?” Jerome lets out a laugh, but it bounces around the walls and takes residence in Bruce’s brain in triplicate. It’s terrifying. His hand tightens around Jerome’s pants leg, short nails sounding against the grain of the threadbare denim. 

“If I say yes, will you get down,” Bruce’s voice quakes, a reminder of the difference a couple of years can truly make, “please?” The two aren’t even three years apart, Bruce a little too young for his grade and Jerome a little too old— both outcasts among their peers. 

They have more alike than they’d like to think.

“Okay, okay,” on his way out of the chair, Jerome wobbles on his feet and he feels the same cold that has been bothering Bruce, “let’s get out of this room.” As he goes for the door, Jerome turns and grips onto Bruce’s jacket sleeve, bringing the boy out of the room with added effort. 

The sensation of unfounded fear isn’t new to Jerome— he feels concerns when he isn’t sure there’s something to be concerned about, he feels stress due to nonexistent forces, he hears sounds that aren’t there; it’s what keeps him so comfortable with the unexpected. 

Bruce is not blessed with the same aloof nature. Alternatively, he struggles with placing his own emotions, with placing what it is about an environment that makes him anxious. The fact that he can’t place his concern makes him that much more anxious. 

“Thank you,” Bruce’s flashlight is shaking and Jerome pretends not to notice, “thank you.”

In the hallway, Bruce’s fear has melted into a cold sweat and general embarrassment that manifests as a blush. This, Jerome notices. “What’s that on your cheek, Bruce,” he says, easily keeping pace with the shorter boy, “what’s that right there?” Jerome plunks a finger down on Bruce’s cheek, dragging it far too gently over the curve of his cheekbone.

“Stop it,” he says halfheartedly, smiling far more than he is complaining, “come  _on,_  Jerome, don’t tease.”

“Hey, hey,” Jerome is all open hands and an animated shrug, walking backwards in front of Bruce with a face-splitting smile, “you’re the one being a tease, darling.” Bruce smily waves him off, attempting to brush past Jerome but the other boy keeps pace, the distance between them shrinking as he shuffles backward. “No, I’m serious. I’m always serious—” he’s interrupted by a tiny laugh from Bruce, something high and sharp and  _horribly_  precious, “I’m always serious about pretty little rich boys.”

The entirety of Bruce’s face has turned red and he can’t find his voice. He flounders, stopping in his tracks as he presses a hand on Jerome’s chest when he comes to meet it. “Will you take that stupid coat off, already,” he finally manages, eyes downcast to avoid having to face his own embarrassment, “the dust is going to make you sick.”

“Make me,” it’s more indignant than it is anything else, only flirtatious by association, but Jerome plays it up with his active eyebrows.

Bruce takes the bait. When doesn’t he? He rolls his eyes and reaches forward, pulling the brittle coat off of Jerome’s shoulders and down his arms. The material crinkles and cracks as it goes, terrible sounds that come with a cloud of dust. 

Everything around them smells old and unloved, the floor creaks beneath them and as Bruce drops the coat, he immediately wishes he hadn’t. When it hits the floor, dust comes bubbling up, surrounding them both— Bruce is the first to start choking, after having tried to draw air into his lungs to laugh. 

Jerome pulls Bruce away by the front of his jacket, drags him fifteen steps back into a wall that quakes when they hit it. The sound echoes through the hallway, into the metal doors that shake in their frames. It sounds more like a desperate cry than it does a series of doors, more like a warning than a natural response. Bruce grasps at Jerome’s sweater the way that Jerome’s hands have been gripping Bruce’s jacket; desperately and with overwhelming terror. 

“You’re not scared, are you?” Jerome teases, his own voice markedly smaller than it was mere minutes ago.

“No,” Bruce says far too quickly, not moving his hands, “not really.” His flashlight sits on the floor where he’s dropped it, the beam going down the hall where it dies to the swallowing darkness.

“Truth be told,” Jerome becomes keenly aware that the two of them are far too close, sharing the same dust and dwindling light, “I’m a little nervous.” A slow growing groaning sound leaves his parted lips, evolving into a breathy laugh. He drops his head against Bruce’s shoulder, hair ghosting over Bruce’s face and leaving dust wherever it touches. 

At the end of the hallway, in the barely-there remains of Bruce’s flashlight beam, something falls to the floor. Boxes and pieces of defunct equipment go tumbling, sending them both upright and stiff. 

Silence doesn’t follow; the sound of fast, clammy feet hitting the ground does. It’s constant, louder and louder and coming down the hallway. Bruce can feel Jerome’s shallow breath on his neck. He hears a word die on Jerome’s tongue, turning into a half-finished whine.

Bruce wiggles himself out of Jerome’s hands, throwing himself back before taking one of the other boy’s hands into his own. He’s never been one to flee, always thought himself to be something of a fighter— this moment defines him in his flight. As he runs through the hallway, flashlight forgotten and rational thought fractured, Bruce focuses on the uneven sound of Jerome’s footfalls behind him. The sound of softer, smaller footfalls follows closely.

Jerome pulls them to a solid halt, then into an office, shoving the door shut behind them. He throws his back up against it, pulling Bruce with him and into his chest. It’s Jerome who has to press a hand over his own mouth to keep his heavy breathing from being heard, but Bruce is just as horrified, tiny wheezing sounds coming from his throat as he tries to breathe. 

The dust and the sound of feet pattering by makes it hard to even bring air into his lungs, but Bruce manages as best he can, hands balled into fists at Jerome’s sides. Footsteps run by at the same pace they’d come up with, only briefly stopping to sniff at the door they’d closed. A chittering, chirping sound follows at the footsteps continue down the hallway, and suddenly it’s all Bruce can do to keep himself from laughing. It bubbles up out of his throat, leaving him practically shaking. 

“Raccoon,” he says, opening his hands and closing them again around the sweater hem bunched around Jerome’s hips, “it was raccoons.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Oh, my god,” Bruce throws his head back, dragging a long breath in, “I’m sorry for pulling you.”

“What? You’re apologizing for trying to save me?” There’s a twitching in Jerome’s arms that travels all the way up into his back, but he keeps his arms wrapped around Bruce regardless. “Really, Brucie? I ought to thank you.”

“No, no,” shaking his head, Bruce looks up at Jerome with an undue amount of sincerity, a kindness that Jerome isn’t all that used to seeing in other people. “It isn’t that big of a deal.”

“ _I_  think it’s a big deal,” Jerome flutters his eyelashes as elegantly as someone like him can, “what does a princess do for her savior? Y’know, in fairytales.”

Bruce giggles, airy and still a little bit panic-ridden. “Are you trying to refer to yourself as a princess, Jerome? Honestly, I don’t think—”

“A kiss seems fair.” 

It’s not like Jerome to give someone time to prepare for anything, but he hesitates in front of Bruce, trying to read his face. Though, Bruce purposefully makes himself hard to read and Jerome has never been particularly good at comprehending the nuances of expression. It’s a losing fight the whole way down, but Jerome is still confident as he presses a kiss onto Bruce’s lips. He doesn’t want to be thought of as a gentle person, as someone with carefulness built into his bones, but Jerome tries his best when it counts. Jerome doesn’t press, doesn’t push it farther than he imagines Bruce is willing to accept it.

When Bruce pulls Jerome back down, all bets are off. 

Jerome barely knows who he is once it registers that  _Bruce Wayne_  is kissing him, is pressed up onto his tiptoes to keep the contact that he wants. Bruce motherfucking Wayne. Goddamn.

With no life or death situations at their heels, Jerome pushes himself up off of the door he’s been holding shut. He walks Bruce back to a desk, long left unused but still strong enough to hold the smaller boy’s weight when Jerome lifts him up and sets him down on top of it. 

“Did you just pick me up?” Bruce barely pulls himself away from Jerome’s lips to speak, sliding to the edge of the desk to meet the other. 

“Yeah, ‘course I did,” without any hesitation, Jerome brings a hand up to hold the side of Bruce’s face, bringing him right back in. 

There’s a high possibility, at least to Jerome, that this is the first and last time he’ll be able to be this close to Bruce. The cautious friendship he’s built with the younger boy will be dismantled come class on Monday, and he’ll barely be able to think of kissing him. He knows it should make it all seem bittersweet, he knows it should make this hurt, but he doesn’t care. Jerome drives both hands up into Bruce’s hair, holds him with fingers reaching around the curve of his skull and thumbs following the subtle arch of his cheekbones.

Surprisingly enough, Bruce makes an attempt to mirror Jerome’s movements, sliding his arms around and over the other boy’s back. He closes the distance between their chests, pressing close, nowhere near as brazen as Jerome but he’s trying.

That’s what’s strange; he’s trying.

Bruce very seldom tries for anyone, barely even himself.

A few seconds in, Bruce realizes that he’s forgotten to breathe, pulling back with a very embarrassing whimper. Jerome’s hands are still on his face, eyes fluttering open to scan over his features for anything. “Sorry,” Bruce says, breathing in gratefully, swinging his legs and letting them hit the desk repeatedly, “I, um, I— Air.”

“Goddamn,” he can’t help himself, Jerome puts down a series of kisses on Bruce’s parted lips, “I thought you’d come to your senses, or something.”

“What are you talking about?” The expression on Bruce’s face quickly shifts from fuzzy to critical, “Come to my senses?”

“Well, y’know,” Jerome pulls one hand away from Bruce’s cheek to gesture to himself vaguely, with a general look of disdain on his face, “about what you’re doing.”

“I don’t— I’m doing this because I want to.” If Bruce were to look much more confused, his entire brain may shut down. Bruce is a smart boy, smarter than is good for him, but the tiniest details of social interaction are still lost on him more often than not. He can’t imagine why someone would kiss someone they don’t like, someone they wouldn’t want to kiss again. In fact, he’s still reeling from the fact he’s sharing his first kiss in a haunted asylum, perched up on a desk with a senior wrapped around him.

He and Selina have practiced on one another before, tried seeing what kissing was like, what it was supposed to feel like. It all ended rather badly, with embarrassment and general disappointment; it had never felt like this.

He’ll have to tell Selina about this later. 

“That’s a good one, Brucie,” he brings both of his hands back to his own person, planting them on his hips for lack of a better option, “but jokes are usually my thing.” Immediately, and for almost no reason at all, Jerome starts backtracking on himself. “That’s not to say that just ‘cause I have a crush on you, that you’re a joke, or anything,” his face quickly starts changing colors, visible even in the low moonlight coming in the broken windows behind them, “shit. I mean— Fuck. That’s not— I didn’t—”

“You’re quite the flatterer,” Bruce jokes, distinctly more confident now that he’s aware he has the upper hand, now that he has the opportunity to be in control. “The delivery could use a little work, though.”

“God,” the hurt starts to build in Jerome’s chest, something so terrible and vulnerable that he tries to swallow it back down. He brings his hands back to Bruce, to his slight waist hidden beneath a turtleneck and a jacket, both far more expensive than anything Jerome has ever owned.

Holding Bruce is like holding an unknown Van Gogh, some piece of artwork that had been hiding in a basement somewhere, wrapped in shrouds and signed with a dying hand— Jerome feels like he’s holding the most important thing in the entire world. He doesn’t understand it so he just leans in closer, his fear and stress only visible in the ferocity with which he’s holding onto Bruce.

“For someone who can’t stop joking,” Bruce says, well aware of Jerome’s strong grip, “you seem to be very critical of yourself. It’s like it hasn’t registered with you that I also have feelings for you.”

“Feelings don’t matter, they never have,” he stares down at the pattern on Bruce’s turtleneck, commits as much of it to memory as he can, “you have an image, Brucie.”

“An image?”

“For fucks sake,” Jerome’s voice jumps pitch, hitching on a dry, crackling sound, “people like you go with people like you. Rich people. You know,” he gestures at Bruce’s sweater, to the watch on his wrist that glitters with an inscription in French, “a Rolex and a turtleneck kind of person. With a big house and a summer home and a cottage in the fucking Alps, all of it. The heir of some other company, somebody from somewhere better than here, with a future, Brucie.” 

“Who says?” Despite being smaller than Jerome, Bruce puffs up well. He looks up at Jerome with an elegant defiance, unfortunately angelic with the moonlight framing him from behind. “Also, Cartier. Not Rolex.”

“What?”

“The watch,” Bruce holds his arm up, the white gold and diamond timepiece sagging on his small wrist, “it’s Cartier.”

“I don’t know what that is. I’ve never heard of that,” after speaking so much before, Jerome’s voice is quieter now, subdued and overwhelmed, “but you’re proving my point.” 

“No,” as if he’d been planning it the whole night, Bruce easily undoes the leather band of the watch and wraps it around Jerome’s wrist, “I’m really not. You don’t have a point.” The watch fits Jerome’s wrist better than it had Bruce’s, making it feel right as Bruce fixes the latch and removes his hands. “I like you. That’s it. That’s enough.”

“You’re real smooth when you want to be, aren’t you, Brucie?” Giving in to Bruce’s sentiment isn’t easy for Jerome, but he accepts, slowly, that maybe it’s okay. Maybe it’s worth it. Because Jerome really does like Bruce.

Bruce is nice, despite his occasional ignorance. He tries to understand what people are feeling, what motivates them, and it seems that deep down, he wants to help people. Jerome can’t really relate to that, but there’s something so very endearing about the nobility of the gesture. It’s something that makes Jerome feel grounded, reminded of what little good there is in the world. Knowing that he holds that good in his arms— that makes his heart struggle.

“I try to be, when it counts,” Bruce says, leaning up to kiss Jerome again. He isn’t sure if he’s going to be allowed to, but when the opportunity continues to be made available to him, he takes it. As if it isn’t distracting, Bruce reaches down and disengages one of Jerome’s hands from his jacket so that he can hold it himself. There’s so much intimacy in the gesture that Jerome melts, from the inside out, and goes soft in Bruce’s hands. Even after he pulls back for air again, Bruce is swelling with a warmth that Jerome can feel, right down into his bones. 

“So you really want this?” Jerome asks, getting his answer from Bruce in the form of a nod and a squeeze of his hand. “In public, and shit?”

“Where else?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, leaning back and pulling Bruce off of the table with him. “Just making sure, I guess.”


	2. by the light of day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bruce tells selina about the night at the asylum, and she witnesses his interactions with jerome firsthand

“Let me get this straight,” Selina says, walking alongside Bruce in the hallway, voice a bit too loud for pushing seven in the morning, “you followed a presumed violent criminal into an abandoned asylum—”

“He’s not a criminal, Selina—”

“And you kissed, a  _lot—”_

 _“_ Tell the whole school, why don’t you—”

“ _And_  you gave him your fucking Cartier,” Selina holds her books to her chest tensely, looking up at Bruce, “how much did that thing cost, again?”

“Um,” he knows that there’s no right way for him to answer this question, so he decides to bite the bullet, “seventy-one thousand.” 

“This boy better be a fucking dreamboat,” she says, letting Bruce open the door to their first class for her, “if you spent seventy-one thousand dollars on him.”

“He’s worth it,” Bruce assures, smiling. That’s enough for Selina, a clear enough indication that Bruce is willing to give this boy anything he could want and more— she likes seeing Bruce like this. Seeing Bruce happy and lovestruck, it’s a good thing. He’s finally letting himself feel  _something_. Although, she’s also willing to fight this boy to the death if he hurts Bruce. 

Bruce has been through enough, Selina isn’t interested in seeing him go through any more suffering. 

* * *

At lunch, Selina has Bruce walk through the line with her, trying to teach her everything they’ve learned in their english class in the last three weeks. “Did you even read the book?” Bruce asks, immediately rolling his eyes and laughing, “I don’t know why I ask you that. The answer is always the same.” 

“I tried this time,” she defends, inching forward impatiently. If she misses the pizza because she got to this line late, she’s going to commit a murder, for sure. “It was just  _so_  fucking boring. It’s just one big long poem, I mean,” Selina catches sight of the pizza, more pieces remaining than there are students between her and the trays, “what’s that all about?” 

“It’s an  _epic,_ Selina,” and where laughter should go, Bruce’s voice dies in his throat. He’s looking off at the other side of the lunch line, past the cashier. 

“You can’t be serious.” Selina catches sight of the boy Bruce is staring at, mismatched socks and jeans that don’t quite meet his ankles, a scratchy wool sweater that can’t  _possibly_  keep him warm enough when the snow starts to fall— he’s wearing the fucking watch. Seventy-one thousand dollars on his wrist, engraved with French well-wishes and the Wayne family crest. “Jerome Valeska. You didn’t say it was  _Jerome_.” 

“How many people at this school are rumored to have killed their mothers?” Bruce is waving sheepishly, and Jerome waves back, leaning against a wall and waiting for him, “Are you mad?”

“I’m not mad,” she says, taking her slice of pizza and stacking school-board-mandated sides next to it; french fries, a brownie, milk, “if anything, I’m surprised. You know he’s a total nut job, right?” 

“Don’t be rude,” even though Bruce is chastising her, he still pays for Selina’s lunch without missing a beat. 

“Thanks, Bruce,” it’s routine, by now. Selina thinks that she might actually be conditioned to respond like that  _every_ time Bruce buys her something. “Look, if he makes you happy? Okay, fine. But you’d better tell me if he pulls any weird shit on you— you know how older guys can be.”

“What are we talking about all seriously?” Jerome asks when they meet him, sliding his hand around Bruce’s shoulders easily. 

“Nothing, Selina was just—”

“I was telling him how willing I am to kill you,” Selina says, plucking up a french fry and biting into it, “if he needs me to. You guys wanna eat outside?” 

“Sure,” because Bruce can’t find his voice, Jerome speaks up for him, “and I need a detailed list on how to stay  _way_  off your bad side.” 

“He’s smarter than he looks, Bruce,” she laughs, bristling when the breeze sends her hair out of order. 

The whole lunch break, as Selina tries to parse the details of her math homework that’s due next period, Bruce tells Jerome about his day. What’s worse; Jerome actually listens. He sits with his head in his hand, staring at Bruce like he’s the most amazing thing this side of the Milky Way. Bruce rearranges himself into Jerome’s lap, at the other boy’s insistence, but when Jerome finally has him in his arms, he’s surprisingly calm. Selina watches with a critical eye, but she’s happy to see that all Jerome wants to do is put his hands on Bruce’s waist. 

“I’ll meet you in class,” she says, stepping away from their picnic table with ten minutes left in their lunch, “don’t be late, Bruce.” And Selina winks at them both on her way back into the building. 

“I think she hates me,” Jerome says, pulling a sour face as he watches her go. 

“No,” Bruce kisses him, bringing him in close by the neckline of his sweater, “that was her approving. She gave us time to ourselves.” 

“ _Oh_ ,” and he laughs, trembling lips against Bruce’s, “thank god. She’s terrifying.” 

* * *

“Is he a good kisser?” Selina asks, teasingly poking at the hickey that’s crawling out from the neckline of Bruce’s shirt. 

“Yeah,” lest he want to get caught, Bruce keeps his voice low, hiding his words beneath the din of the other students’ mumbling, “he really is.” His entire face is red, the margin of his notes full of tiny little hearts. 

“You think you love him?” After a beat of silence, she scribbles something down on her worksheet, then looks back at Bruce, “I’ll take that stupid look on your face as a yes.” 

“I— I think I  _could_  love him,” he admits, biting down on his lower lip and continuing to doodle in his margins, “and I definitely want to love him.” 

“Gross,” but Selina is smiling, eventually pointing out questions that she needs Bruce’s help answering. This change in attitude, Bruce going from withdrawn and negative to more positive and hopeful? Selina likes that, and she likes anyone that can make him feel that way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting these little fills on here is exhausting because i can't come up with enough titles aha;;; i usually put so much work into titles, but i just don't have the time when doing these. please forgive me. 
> 
> i'm on tumblr! i'm [ mayor-crumblepot ](https://mayor-crumblepot.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i love these boys and hope to write lots more for them, tbh
> 
> i'm on tumblr! i'm [ mayor-crumblepot ](https://mayor-crumblepot.tumblr.com)


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